A Human's Condition
by ViciousHerring
Summary: Inspired by Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, Explosion in the Sky's Let Me Back In, Long Distance Calling's Metulsky Curse Revisited and Versa's We Are Not What We Say We Are. I fail to see the connection. I own no part Sherlock or it's characters.
1. Chapter 1

"I don't understand..," her voice is thick, unshed tears rim her eyes. "You're saying... you're saying that... all that effort... it never... mattered... anyway?"

The tall man opens and closes his mouth soundlessly; there is nothing he can say, no explanation he can give.

"I... suppose you're... to be paid now, then... for your work..." the woman's chin quivers, her words are strong but halting, her hands shake as she searches for something in her bag. "H-here... here, please... t-take it..," she fumbles with her wallet, finally thrusting the entire thing at Sherlock who flinches slightly, unsure of himself in the sudden onslaught of the woman's emotions.

"John," the detective calls out, his voice weak, his steady if somewhat surprised gaze never leaving his client.

"I know you're probably right... nothing... nothing could have... stopped this..," the woman says softly, her wallet falling, forgotten, from her outstretched hand; her wide, shocked eyes rolling about the scene surrounding them. The absolute destruction of her little corner of the world is flung around the small room carelessly.

The woman's young cousin, hired as a babysitter, slumped against a table leg; funny, distressing, how sweetly she rests despite the tattered, pulpy remains of her hands and feet and the large glistening slabs of flesh that were carefully carved from her midriff.

Sherlock's client gestures, vaguely. "Her name was Moira... she... she was fourteen..," the woman's gaze returns to the detective's face.

"John," he calls out again, a hoarse gasp, trying desperately to summon his doctor friend who is just outside calling for help. The quiet horror of the room takes residence in his client's eyes, it's fascinating and he can't look away, can't help but attempt to deduce the whirling mass of dreadful conclusions that are forming in this woman's broken mind.

Her wild, glassy orbs dart to the side and Sherlock's gaze follows, he wishes briefly that it had not; the table against which her cousin leans holds an infinitely more hurtful sight.

"James... not yet ten months..," she breathes, "my miracle..." Her child lay, swaddled in his own entrails, his skull splayed open like a great bloody flower.

"Madam," Sherlock says softly, "I apologize..."

"Don't," her lifeless eyes drift wonderingly across his features, "Don't. You hardly can, sir... you... don't actually know what those words mean..."

"I... I... John..!"

The woman takes a step toward him slowly, her attention seemingly elsewhere as she approaches.

"Sshhh, it's okay. I understand... your doctor companion will as well... You'll tell him... He'll... be able to explain... There's nothing left to do here... He'll understand... he'll explain it to you... There's nothing here anymore..," her voice is calm, soothing; the finality of her words strike Sherlock as misplaced, oddly out of sorts with what he assumed she would be experiencing. The client's hand, still reaching to him from her attempt to pay for his services, trembles as she gently takes hold of his wrist.

The detective's pale eyes widen a fraction as her movements remind him of John's gun, loaded, cocked, safety disengaged, in his gloved hand. Sherlock's grip tightens on the weapon but she doesn't seem to be trying to take it from him. Confusion flashes across his face as draws closer, "Madam..?"

"It's alright now, Mister Holmes... The work... for what it's worth... is done and you've been paid... Your friend will be able to explain, I think..."

"John!" Sherlock calls out, stronger this time. He can't tell if he's shaking or if it's the woman's grip on his hand holding the gun.

"Like you said, sir, it had never mattered anyway..," the serenity of the client's countenance as she looks into those silver blue eyes is more obscenely horrifying than anything the consulting detective has encountered in his illustrious career.

"JOHN!" Sherlock's scream is drowned out by the sudden gun shot; he feels the weapon jerk in his hand, the light patter of blood droplets hitting his face. The woman staggers back falling to the gore covered floor of her home, the gun sliding from their hands and clattering to the ground between them.

His client hardly winces at the bullet that's ripped into her liver; black blood oozing from the wound in her stomach. "It's done because... apparently... it never mattered..," she whispers when Sherlock dives to his knees next to her, long, sure hands shaking as they try to stop the loss of more life.

"JOHN! JOHN!" he screams and continues to scream as he stares into the soft, dying eyes of this woman, this client whose case wasn't quite interesting enough for him to remember her name; it's far more interesting now as she whispers to him things that he may never understand. Sherlock leans over her, searching her face for answers. "**WHY?** Why do this _NOW?_ The case is solved! What did I miss?"

"CHRIST! Sherlock!" John drops to the floor next to them, field surgeon mode kicking in, "Move out the way, then! Let me see it!" John mutters to himself as he assesses the situation. He presses on the wound, hard, hoping to stop the blood, thinking that Lestrade should make it in time to save her until he sees her face. There's no fear just calm resignation, she'll die in minutes, no matter what efforts he makes, but, really, John's seen that look before, he knows what's coming; maybe he can talk her out of letting go, though, maybe...

"Cathy... come on, Cathy," John speaks gently to the woman who's waiting patiently for death to come to her. "You don't want to go now, do you? 'Course not. Stay with us, Cathy..."

"He's right... ...," she whispers, her voice so faint that John must almost rest his ear upon her lips. "Nothing could have stopped this... Tell your darling... this... is... best..."

"What does she _mean_, John?" Sherlock groans and whines, agitated and shaking.

"Hush, Sherlock. Stay with me Cathy..."

"He told me... it never... would have mattered... Your sweet is right... but he won't... can't... understand... you'll explain... this is best... only logical..." her last word is a rattled sigh and then she, too, is dead in her small room circled by her murdered family and the two men that tried to help her.

Sherlock rises slowly to his feet, a look of what could only be considered petulant contempt on his sharp features as he stares down at the body of his client.

"This," Sherlock points accusingly at Cathy's still-warm corpse, "this _ISN'T_ logical," he sneers and stalks to the door nearly walking right over a gaping Lestrade.

"Holy Hell," Greg gasps at the gruesome tableau. "What in God's name...?"

"Ask John," Holmes bites out and storms from the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock grumbles to himself as he paces back and forth outside the flat. "Why would she do such a thing? The thugs hired for this will be arrested presently... the corruption of her superiors has been exposed and will be prosecuted. How could suicide have been the logical outcome..?"

"...lock?" the doctor's voice nudges his thoughts vaguely.

Strong hands grab his shoulders and spin him about roughly, "Sherlock!"

"What, John? What?"

"What _EXACTLY_ did you say to Miss Hughes?" John looks at his friend as though his next words could change the fate of the world.

"Who?"

Watson's head falls to the side, he visualizes quite energetically throttling the world's only consulting detective.

"The woman, Sherlock. Cathy, your client. The one that shot herself with **my** gun while it was in **your **hand," the doctor's voice stays remarkably level yet he grows in stature with each word.

Of course that couldn't have happened and Sherlock discovered that it hadn't; John had backed him into a low wall, so much so that the gangly detective is almost bent double with the stout doctor looming over him.

Holmes huffs irritated, "I merely informed Miss... _HUGHES,_ that no amount of effort on our part could have prevented the retaliation against her family but that we could use the attack to ensure a long imprisonment for her employers."

John's eyes squeeze shut as he listens to his friend; a look of physical pain taking over his face as he staggers back, away from Sherlock.

The detective looks on confused, "John..? Bit not good..?"

An hysterical noise, a laugh maybe, bubbles from the former Captain, "More than a bit, Sherlock."

"Her reaction was rather excessive..?" the hesitation in Sherlock's question reminds John to an overwhelming degree that this brilliant mind has a limited intellectual understanding of emotional trauma.

"No..," John sighs, a heavy weariness resting on his shoulders. "No Sherlock, not excessive... desperate, final, but not excessive..."

"Explain," the consulting detective says flatly.

John's mind reels with the thoughts and feelings that had plagued him before moving to Baker St.; that unending sense of purpose-less existence stretching before him like a vast and empty wasteland. He shudders violently trying to dispel the hollow ache that grows within.

"I can't..," John's voice breaks. "Not... right now... I just... can't..," his body sags under the relentless weight of his remembered despair. One hand protectively covers his scarred shoulder while he vacantly watches the building tremors in his other; these things that cost him his beloved livelihood. 'How did this happen to me?' the thought comes unbidden as John turns from his friend who is preoccupied with Lestrade, and limps away.

Sherlock sends the DI off with a scowl and brushes imagined lint from his sleeve, "You were saying, John?" But his steady army doctor is gone, "John..?"


	3. Chapter 3

"You left me at the crime scene, John," the detective calls out as he as he barges into the flat. "John!"

The doctor is not in his chair. More accurately he is on the floor in front of his chair, rocking.

"Why are you on the floor, John?" Sherlock asks in a dramatically exasperated tone.

"I can explain it now," is the toneless response.

"Oh goody," Holmes replies snidely, tossing his coat onto the sofa and stalking to his room, the door slamming shut behind him.

Moments later, Sherlock's door thunders open again and he swirls into the living room in his dressing gown and pajamas.

"I fail to see why you couldn't explain **it** earlier and had to leave me at the crime scene like that," Sherlock says testily as he settles into his chair across from the rocking doctor.

John stills and his gaze flicks up to his friend, "Because."

This sort of answer would normally inflame Holmes to a tantrum of titanic proportion but there is that same viciously serene quality to John's eyes that silences any retort the detective would make.

"You're not going to kill yourself, are you?" Sherlock asks defensively.

Some life returns to the soldier on the floor and he scrubs his hands over his face. "No, but I've thought about it."

"Explain."

"Close your eyes."

Sherlock snorts, "Is this going to be some paltry attempt at hypnosis? Really John."

"Humor me."

Sherlock glares and folds his arms across his chest. "Fine, eyes closed," he says in a sarcastically indulgent manner.

John doesn't respond to the baiting. "Breathe deep," he commands evenly and Sherlock complies.

The detective hears his friend struggle to his feet; John's gait is wrong, hesitant and heavy on one side. "You're limping."

He hears Watson sigh, tired. CLICK! the floor lamp in the corner has been turned off.

"Relax your arms Sherlock." CLICK! "Clear a space in your mind."

Sherlock huffs again. "Practically impossible, Jo..," his words are cut off when a pillow is gently laid against his chest.

"I didn't say your whole mind." Sherlock can hear the frustrated patience in the doctor's voice as he perceives the rest of the lights being shut off. "Breathe deep," John says again.

CLICK! this one is the television, that distinct pitched tone of the electronic coming to life reaches Sherlock and he sneers, but there is just static and the random flickering of "snow." He opens his mouth to comment but John speaks before he can.

"Make the space large," John says smoothly, "a great expanse, a far distant horizon... an unending place."

The static from the television grows just slightly louder. 'He must have the remote,' Sherlock thinks idly as he views the clear landscape in his mind.

"Now fill it," John says from close by. "Fill it with all those things that are meaningful and provide purpose to you." He places another pillow against his friend's chest.

"The Work, John, there's just the Work," Sherlock bites out testily, he fidgets in his seat. The static gets just a little louder again.

"Yes, Sherlock, the Work," Watson says flatly. "I'd say that would take up a goodly bit of space."

If Sherlock's eye were open, he'd be rolling them right now. "All the space, John."

Louder again with the static.

"Breathe deep, Sherlock. Don't forget the people," John goes on. "Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade and all he represents, Mummy... even favorite places; the morgue at Bart's, Angelo's, Baker St..."

Holmes relaxes as the soldier's voice populates the expanse in his mind with images of all those places and things and people that make the Work valuable. At some point, Sherlock realizes that John has stopped talking and the static has grown louder acting as a backdrop, providing depth and life to the now-filled space.

"Don't forget to place yourself in there," John says. "Look around, this is your life, Sherlock..."

More crackling static, it's bothersome and enveloping.

"Now," John's voice is closer, softer in volume but with a cold quality. "Imagine all those favorite places have been destroyed."

Sherlock flinches involuntarily at the thought and tenses to speak, but again the static and John's voice cut him off. "It's already happened, all you see is the aftermath... Angelo's is a glass-fronted shell; Bart's a massive pile of rubble..."

The detective inhales sharply, he feels weight on his chest.

"The people now, Sherlock," John's voice is hurtfully soothing; Holmes blows out a shuddering breath. "They vanish."

The weight on Sherlock's chest grows heavier, the white noise louder, and John's calm voice continues.

"You see only where they had been, all around you. You already know that if you were to look for them you would not find them... They are gone," John watches his friend's brow tighten and his breathing accelerate slightly.

'This is cruel,' he thinks as he puts a touch more pressure on the pillows over Sherlock's ribs. 'It could be worse,' John reminds himself quickly, 'It could be real.'

"There is a something, Sherlock, or a someone," John says turning up the volume on the telly just a hair, "outside yourself, a force beyond your control. You may even know what it is."

In his mind Sherlock whirls about frantically; his breathing is quick and labored. The Work appears diminished without the places he would go to and the people... the people... they're all gone. The white noise is louder now, again, always louder...

"This thing," John goes on, "this force, like a great, howling wind, sweeps around you. The Work breaks apart, crumbling before your eyes, and is carried away from you..."

John turns the volume up again and bears down just a little more on Sherlock's chest. "You can scrabble after them, the pieces of the Work, if you like," John's voice is smooth and monotone; he watches the light sweat build on his friend's upper lip. "But they are like so much smoke, slipping through your hands and being torn away from you by the gale."

'Icing time,' John thinks ruefully as he hits the volume button again. The crackling static fills the flat as he takes in Sherlock's grimace, teeth bared in hopeless defiance, and the detective's short, sharp breaths sucked through parted lips. The doctor leans into the pillows on his friend's chest turning those breaths to desperate gasps.

"You hear words in the howling madness, just over your shoulder," John lowers himself carefully, resting his head on the back of Sherlock's chair, making sure that his breath reaches the detective's neck.

"Nothing could have prevented this," John whispers to his friend.

In a second the former soldier has lifted the pillows and tossed them away, muted the static on the television, and sat down, slumped over against the coffee table.

"Open your eyes," he says into the shockingly quiet living room.


End file.
